How Much Google Ads Budget Do You Actually Need?
Start with £750 to £1,500 per month in ad spend, run it for at least 8 to 12 weeks, and judge the results by your cost per lead against your job value, not by how much each click costs. Below £500 a month you will not get enough data to make reliable decisions.
You want more enquiries from your website, and someone has told you Google Ads is the way to do it. But before you hand over your card details, you are asking the sensible question: how much do you actually need to spend to make this work?
The honest answer is that it depends on your trade, your average job value and where you are based. But there are real numbers we can work with, so let's get specific rather than vague.
The Bare Minimum to Get Useful Data
Google needs enough clicks flowing through your account before it can start showing your ads to the right people at the right price. Below a certain spend, you are essentially guessing.
£500 to £900 a month is the realistic floor for most local trades, roughly £15 to £30 a day. Below this, you will get a trickle of clicks each week, not enough to tell whether your ads, your keywords or your landing page are the problem. Think of this level as a test, not a strategy. You are finding out if the water is warm, not swimming laps.
What a Click Actually Costs You
Cost per click (CPC) is what Google charges each time someone clicks your ad. It is not fixed. It is set by an auction that runs every time someone searches, and it depends heavily on your industry and location.
London and other large cities typically cost 15 to 30 percent more per click than the rest of the UK, simply because more businesses are bidding on the same searches. What matters more than the click price is what happens after the click. A £3 click that turns into a paying customer once every 20 visits is far better value than a £1 click that never converts.
A More Useful Number: Cost Per Lead
Cost per lead (CPL) is what you actually pay for each genuine enquiry, a phone call, a form submission or a booking request. This is the figure that tells you whether Google Ads is paying for itself.
| Trade or service | Typical CPL (UK) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbers and electricians | £15 – £40 | Emergency keywords convert fast |
| Roofers and larger home improvement | £30 – £70 | Higher ticket, slower decision |
| Dentists and aesthetic clinics | £25 – £100 | Varies by treatment advertised |
| Physios and appointment services | £20 – £60 | Lower CPC, decent conversion rates |
| Bridal and beauty professionals | £15 – £45 | Seasonal peaks (Jan, Sep) affect cost |
If your average job is worth £800 and you close one in three leads, you can afford to pay up to roughly £260 per lead and still be comfortable. Most trades never get close to that ceiling.
MapLeads Media, based on UK campaign data 2025 and 2026Building a Realistic Monthly Budget
Here is how we break it down for most local service businesses, based on current UK benchmarks:
Do Not Forget Local Services Ads
If you are a plumber, electrician or work in certain home services, Google's Local Services Ads, the "Google Guaranteed" badge ads that appear above standard search results, are worth testing alongside regular campaigns. You pay per qualified lead rather than per click, and for many trades this works out cheaper per booked job. It is not available for every trade, but check whether your category qualifies before writing it off.
What Can Go Wrong at Any Budget
Budget alone does not guarantee results. Here are the most common ways money gets wasted, regardless of what is being spent:
- 01Broad match keywords with no negative keyword listYour ads show for searches like "plumber jobs" or "DIY electrical", pulling in traffic that was never going to call you. Your budget disappears on people who were not looking for your service.
- 02A landing page that does not convertYou get the clicks but visitors leave without filling in the form. The ad did its job. The page did not. This is one of the most common and most fixable problems we see.
- 03Conversion tracking set up wrongGoogle optimises towards whatever you tell it is a conversion. If tracking is broken or pointing at the wrong goal, the algorithm learns the wrong lessons and your costs quietly climb.
- 04Spreading a small budget too thinRunning five campaigns across three locations on a £600 budget means each campaign gets almost nothing. Concentrate your spend where the opportunity is strongest, then expand from there.
A well-structured £750 a month campaign will usually outperform a messy £3,000 a month one. Structure and tracking matter more than raw spend, especially in the first few months.
If your jobs or packages are worth £500 or more and you are capturing leads through a form or phone call, start with £750 to £1,500 a month in ad spend, run it for at least 8 to 12 weeks, and judge it on cost per lead against your job value. Scale up once you know what is working. That is not a complicated framework, but most businesses never follow it, and that is exactly why most Google Ads campaigns fail.
Want to know what budget
makes sense for your business?
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We will look at your trade, your area and your job value and give you a specific number, not a range with ten caveats.
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